I own a small (but instantly scalable) marketing company in Hollywood, Florida. We used to be on Madison Avenue in New York until we realized that it no longer matters where we are. And, of course, we can always get to New York, or anywhere, in a few hours. We're experts in direct marketing and we work with huge to very small clients. We love them all. We specialize in thorny issues and the medium doesn’t really matter. Direct Marketing’s essentials migrate very nicely, even (especially) into social media. I've written a lot of (published) books and hundreds of articles about marketing. Some of the books have been translated into as many as 8 languages. We call what we do "the magic formula", which is a fancy way of saying “Understand what you’re trying to achieve. Work hard. Test everything. Drop losers, roll out winners. Repeat.” We help our clients get new customers, keep the ones they have and get back the ones they’ve lost. We love developing new brands and now we're using our direct marketing background to build powerful websites and social media campaigns that engage audiences, generate buzz and, more important, develop profitable response.

Big Marketing On A Small Budget?

Four or five times a year, we get calls from entrepreneurs, inventors mainly, looking for marketing help. As far as I can tell, that’s about average for a small marketing agency.

Recently, we heard from a vibrating shoe man, a couple with a terrific new home-schooling program and a woman with a new Luxury Magazine but no circulation!

Naturally, they all had small (very small) marketing budgets. Oddly enough, that’s only #2 on the list of challenges they brought with them. #1 was their pre-conceived notions of what they wanted us to do.

Ideally, new clients should be telling us what they want done and what their budget is, however small it may be. We’d ask a few questions and then come up with our first recommendation: essentially a “let’s do it” or “forget about it”, although we’re never that blunt. It rarely happens that way, though. All those preconceived notions.

A big idea doesn’t always need a big budget, at least at first.

The most important thing is to find out if the new idea has the potential to become a business. Sometimes, it’s obvious. You’ll know what I mean if you watch The Shark Tank.

Then, if the idea seems like it might have wheels, you test. I can’t tell you how many of our visitors say something like: “Test? You’re supposed to be the experts. Why do you have to test?” I’m tempted to refer them to Ron “We didn’t test at Apple” Johnson, former CEO of J.C. Penney.

Then comes a stumbling block: our agency fee. I keep trying to think of new ways to explain why we can’t work in exchange for a share in the new business.

Eventually we get down to brass tacks.

How are we going to make this happen with very little money?

One of the first things you need to do is determine the “allowable cost per order”. I wrote about this – we still call it DM Math but it works online, too – in my personal blog, and it might help you figure out what you can afford to spend and what you can’t. It’s here:

Once we get a handle on the allowable, we usually recommend very tightly targeted direct mail in small waves of a few hundred letters. Sometimes all it takes is a carefully written personal letter to the right people. You might try three or four letter-copy approaches. This almost always works on a small and inexpensive scale.

Yet, when an association president came to see us a few months ago, she turned down a direct mail approach. She wanted to sell booth space at her annual convention. “Direct mail’s too expensive,” she said. It’s not. In fact, we could probably have met all of her goals for about $5,000, all in.

She eventually spent around $60,000 on trade ads and wound up with no exhibitors at all.

Occasionally even just a postcard will work wonders. Postcards work in very rare specific cases. For example, when I worked on the Marshalls account, a buyer told me she’d snagged an amazing deal on comforters from a great designer. She bought 100,000 of them. Usually priced at about $700, the Marshall’s price would be $79.99. Perfect for postcards.

We rushed out a postcard mailing two days later and the comforters were sold in a flash. Postcards work when you can combine a simple story with a visual element, an absolutely irresistible bargain, a targeted audience and an event.

We’ve been seeing amazing results with videos on websites. The latest Harvard Business Review has an article about how DC Shoes (footwear for skateboarders) has been steadily increasing sales using video. In fact they say that the type of exposure they’re getting would cost more than $5 million. Read the article: How To Profit From Lean Advertising

Company Blogs can work if they’re done right. All you need is a great writer who understands your business and is in touch with customers. Blogs are not at all expensive, and they give you an opportunity for your prospects and customers to get an “inside look” at the business you’re running.

This small budget thing is a lot of fun. Let me know if it interests you and I’ll write about more ideas for you in a future column. Thank you in advance for your comments.

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Great article, Lois. Thanks for sharing these positive suggestions. As “bootstrappers”, we’re always interested in ways to get our still pre-revenue online product marketed – and bringing in revenue! My partner and I would definitely be interested in further articles on this topic.

Thank you Linda. I started my own agency on just a few thousand dollars and had to really think through every small expenditure. Now, that was over 25 years ago…and we’re still going. So, I understand the “bootstrapping”. Thank you so much for taking the time to comment.

I’m planning a launch of a toy by starting it on Amazon – its easier to get high rank there than in Google – then offering prizes and more toys to early adopters to encourage them to post videos. I’d say its more ‘no budget’ than ‘low budget’.

You’re right though, the greatest impediment usually the ‘I have a dream’ person who came for help.

John, just a quick note about Amazon…. correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Amazon retains ownership of your client list, even if you decide not to sell on Amazon in the future. It is easy to start selling there, but leaving may be more difficult. Again, just a word of caution worth checking out.

Probably the one thing I love most about small budgets (and let’s be honest — as marketers we all know there’s not a lot to love about small budgets!) is that it forces you to be truly creative and laser-focused on getting results. Not that big agencies with equally big budgets aren’t creative, but they clearly have a greater margin of error and can “play around” in a bigger sandbox. Small business clients with small budgets may have big dreams, but small budgets can be useful in terms of cleaning up marketing clutter and investing one’s resources in just one or two campaigns that really work, rather than spreading oneself too thin across multiple channels and diluting the brand.

I agree with you, Marjorie. I also think that small companies have a lot of latitude to take some chances on breakthrough work. Large budget usually come with large companies that have committees. Those groups tend to be more careful and conservative. They sometimes “tamp down” really great creative because their careers are at stake. I’ve seen this happen so often with our own bank clients. Once we did several programs for a Bank in New York…and the client confided in me afterwards that she loved one of the creatives, but was afraid the President might give her grief about it. That was a real shame…loved that program.